


Everything Waits For You

by Littorella



Series: Dark Matters [2]
Category: Loveless
Genre: Gen, M/M, Psychological Drama
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-18
Updated: 2018-03-18
Packaged: 2019-04-04 05:07:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14012829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Littorella/pseuds/Littorella
Summary: The truth about Beloved proves to be a secret too big to be kept.





	Everything Waits For You

 

Seimei put on his shoes and prepared to leave. His eyes barely considered Nisei.

"I'm going to see Chiyako-san. There's something I must ask of her."

The older boy hung onto his every word and motion. "Can I go with you?"

"No," Seimei replied firmly.

Such a clipped answer angered Nisei. "Why do you never take me when you go to that old woman's house? What is so special about that place? What is so special about her? I want to know."

"It doesn't concern you. You should know better than expect things you don't deserve."

"You take my patience for granted," Nisei scowled in frustration. He was beginning to lose the ability to accept cryptic explanations in scraps.

"Don't complain. It doesn't suit you. You'll ruin your beautiful face if you keep making such ugly expressions." Seimei patted him on the head and ran a hand through his long black hair, as though he were a pet. Leaning into the touch, Nisei closed his eyes and remained silent.

"I'll be back tomorrow."

After Seimei's departure, he turned on his computer and looked for the other boy's phone sim card id from his network's connection history. Someone as careful as Seimei should have known better than to connect to a wifi network if he didn't want his information accessible to its owner. With the information in hand, Nisei began to collect its GPS history.

Lucky for the persistent, there was no such thing as privacy in this day and age.

Running a quick analysis of all points where the phone's location remained constant for more than four hours consecutively yielded a short list of locations. Most of them were in the city, in neighborhoods that definitely had no houses like the one Seimei off-handedly described. There were several places that peaked his interest, but he remained focused on the task at hand. The only one that seemed likely was a location near Mount Takao. He could get there on the Chou Line in just over an hour. He could skip school on Friday and go.

 

*

 

The old traditional house stood hidden by a curtain of drooping evergreen trees. Their leaning branches were supported by wooden poles that made them look extraordinary precarious, as though they'd fall apart any moment if the wind blew too hard. The door to the back garden slid open and a young man in a navy sweater stepped out with a black and white cat swirling around his legs. He wiggled his ears in response to a rustle from the trees before beginning to sweep the veranda with a twig broom. The image was idyllic, speaking of a slower, more innocent type of life.

Nisei focused his binoculars on the housekeeper's cat and followed it as it patrolled a circle around the house before sauntering back to the veranda and lying down. Feeling satisfied with his reconnaissance, he placed the binoculars into a satchel slung over his back and started the climb down from his perch on a high branch of a large camphor tree. Once he reached the bottom, he put his shoes on and looked to his watch to see how he was doing on time. Two hours before he had to get back to the train station. He'd gone without his phone, just to be extra safe about being traced, and was feeling odd about having to use a watch.

Careful to stay hidden within the trees, Nisei approached the house from the rear with quiet steps. At the edge of the garden, he ducked behind a tree and waited for the housekeeper to turn the corner out of view. Once there was no chance of being seen, he inched up toward the house and took out a can of tuna of his bag and cracked it open. The cat lifted its head and looked toward him.

A whistle was all it took to call the cat to him. Its yellow eyes were on him as it slinked over. He set the can of fish on the ground and waited for the cat to let its guard down. The cat dipped its pink nose to sniff the can then began to eat greedily. Nisei crouched down and ran a hand over its soft head, petting it between the ears. When the cat paid him no attention, he grabbed it by the scruff and picked it up. Animals were so simple.

He took the cat out of the property and deeper into the forest before for levitating it into the air. The hapless creature struggled against his invisible grip, flailing helplessly in midair. With a flick of his wrist, he pushed the cat up to the canopy of the tallest tree where it would not know how to get down. Giving the tiny spotted spec up high in the trees a last look, he returned to the thicket just short of the property line and stood behind a tree to wait.

The housekeeper finished his sweeping and set the broom against the corner of the house. He looked around for his cat outside then entered the house. A moment later, he emerged again, circling the house, bending down to check under it.

"Shirokuro!" he called as he traced the edge of the garden.

Once he wandered into the forest to look for his cat, Nisei ducked the other way and started walking toward the house. He first inspected the exterior. It was not out of the ordinary for an old house, its beams gray with age. There was no surveillance, not even a motion-triggered light. Leaving his shoes outside, he entered the house without making a sound. The interior was similarly pedestrian, covered in tatami mats and simple furniture.

He silently tread through the sitting room, looking for clues as to why Seimei was so secretive about the place. So far there was nothing of note to report. The smaller rooms were traditionally sparse, filled with floral blankets and altogether lacking in the way of interesting things. There was a single family portrait on a dresser in a bedroom. In the photograph was an older woman, Chiyako, he guessed, standing with a young dark-haired couple holding a baby in front of the house. Judging by their clothing and hairstyles, it was taken sometime in the late 80's or early 90's.

"It's you."

Nisei jumped, still clutching the framed photo. He hadn't counted on there being anyone else in the house. Seimei had said Chiyako was almost never home during the day. But the elderly woman was before him now, staring at him with a feeble hand on the door frame. Her eyes were glossy with the sheen of an emotion he could not quite place, a feeling just out of reach for him. He set the photo frame down and turned to face her. The woman sucked in a shaky breath and placed a hand on her chest.

"I didn't expect it to be you," her warm voice quivered as she spoke, "Is Sei-san with you?"

Nisei narrowed his eyes, trying to read if she was friend or foe, but coming up empty. On one hand, she was not alarmed he'd broken into her house; on the other, there must have been a reason he was not supposed to be here. He'd have to settle for some version of truth with her. "No, he's not," he said with a false smile, "You must be Chiyako-san."

"Yes, I am. No need to be so formal with me, Nisei. I am happy to finally meet you," she murmured, still clutching the door frame as though it were holding her up.

"You know who I am?" He tilted his head in question and flashed an amused grin. It irritated Nisei to no end that she seemed to know much about him when he knew so little about her.

Chiyako gave him a warm smile, one that reached deep into her eyes, and gestured for him to follow her. "Come, let's have some tea. I want to get a good look at you."

She insisted he sit while she prepared the tea, fussing when he tried to get up to help. It gave him the distinct feeling of being infantilized. As he waited, he glanced out the door to the garden and wondered if the housekeeper had discovered his cat or not. Chiyako returned to break his thoughts with a tray of tea. She poured them each a cup. As they sat, he could tell her gaze was lingering on him just a tad too long before she looked away when he meet her eyes, as if she were studying him in depth but was too bashful to want him to notice.

"I didn't mean to intrude, Chiyako-san. You must forgive me," he offered politely as he sipped the hot, green liquid, "And thank you for the tea. It's very good."

Chiyako kept her kind brown eyes on him, line of sight tracing every feature of his face. "Did Sei-san send you?"

Nisei paused before answering. "I'm afraid he doesn't know I'm here."

"Oh," she muttered, the lines around her eyes betraying how crestfallen she was to hear his reply. Without saying anything further, she poured him more tea and seemed lost in her own thoughts.

"Was he supposed to?"

The old woman forced a smile and said with an excessively saccharine tone, "Let's talk about something else? It'd be a shame to waste our time on that boy. Tell me about yourself, what do you like to do? What do you like to eat?"

Taken aback at her deflection, Nisei turned sharply and contemplated how to properly extract information. She clearly knew something that Seimei was deliberately keeping him in the dark about. Doubting she'd find his— _interests_ —to be polite conversation, he skipped her first question and replied with a mask of wholesome innocence, "I go to school at Nakano Technical, 3rd year. I guess my favorite food is okonomiyaki. "

"Ah, that was her favorite too. I'll have to make it for you sometime," Chiyako whispered, suddenly looking on the verge of tears. "You look so much like your mother when she was young; you have her face."

Nisei raised an eyebrow and wondered if he had misheard or if the woman was going senile in her old age. No one who had functioning eyes had ever made that claim before; his mother, with her long face and deep-set green eyes, looked nothing like him. They certainly have said that he  _sounded_ like her, careful and exacting with his cutting words, but never any physical resemblance.

"How do you know my mother exactly? I have never heard her mention you."

Upon seeing his confusion, Chiyako patted the table and tried to change the subject. Her eyes shone with rheumy moisture as she looked at him, unable to tear her gaze away. "Don't mind me. Just an old woman reminiscing about being younger. Tell me more about you."

Something was not right; the longing with which she spoke was almost as if…

"Of course," he put on a kind face, "I like to make things. I built a program that automatically writes replies to emails for me yesterday. Having to write people back is so time consuming. And as you know already, I'm Seimei's friend. You seem like his friend too. How do you know him?"

Wrapping her hands around the warmth of her teacup, Chiyako nodded wistfully and replied, "That's nice. I wouldn't say that I am his friend. It is strange for someone so old to be friends with someone so young. I'm helping Sei-san achieve his goal, and he is helping me too. I guess you can say we have the same goals."

"And what is your goal, Chiyako-san?" he asked, staring back, pretending to give her all his compassion. Sensing what she craved by the way she drank in his presence, Nisei place a hand over hers and gave a light, encouraging squeeze. Her weary eyes drifted toward his hand, lingering on the word printed across it's back.

Barely audible, she murmured to herself, "Justice. For a terrible thing that was done to someone I loved."

"What happened? Was it Nanatsu no Tsuki?" he pressed, leaning closer to her to gain her confidence. He could feel her yielding to his charm.

Chiyako's voice broke when she heard the dreaded name. She sobbed, "They treated my daughter Yui like an animal. They used her in an experiment and discarded her when it drove her mad. And then they took the last thing I had of her—" The woman stopped, her lips trembling, "They destroyed this family. All those people care about is creating the perfect unit. They forget that these are human beings they are playing with."

"I'm sorry to hear that," he comforted her in a sympathetic tone, "I hope you find your justice."

She gave him a heartbroken look and reached to brush the hair from his face. He indulged her and allowed her to place a hand on his cheek. "I am so glad to have finally met you, Nisei."

"And you as well, Chiyako-san."

He offered her a wide smile, but there was no kindness in it. His mind was speeding faster than light from the old woman's confession. The family portrait in the other room was burning in the back of his eyes. But she was just spouting nonsense. He had a normal family and normal parents. His father was a fund manager. His mother was lawyer. They were regular people.  _Don't you ever wonder where your power came from?_

It nagged at him to no end.

 

*

 

Once at home, Nisei immediately sat down at his computer and shelled into the server where Bloodless kept the data they'd stolen from Nanatsu no Tsuki. He wrote a query for the name "Yui" and waited, nervously tapping the arrow keys, switching between windows as if that was going to speed up the search. Having to look at every row of data and every directory, the vague query was taking forever to run. Feeling restless, he got up and paced around his apartment.

The door's lock clicked and he dashed back to the computer, frantically opening programs to hide the terminal. Seimei emerged into the room and shrugged off his jacket at the door. When he hung up the coat, he flipped the lightswitch by the door. Nisei squinted against the sudden brightness; he hadn't even realized he'd been sitting in the dark.

"What you doing?" Seimei demanded, walking over to look at his monitors.

Pushing back the urge to click around, Nisei turned. He lied, easy as breathing air, "Just managing my trades. Good tape action today, we had some volatility crush so I need to manage positions."

The other boy looked at him with suspicion before sitting down on the couch. "It's eight. The markets are closed."

Fuck, he was right.

Quickly switching his trading platform to another instrument, he made up more lies, "I'm over options; I'm trading futures and forex now. The futures market trades 24/7." He definitely did not have the capital to trade futures, but was hoping the finer details of financial derivatives were too far beyond Seimei's knowledge to get called out.

"Hmm, quit doing that boring stuff and let's go have dinner," Seimei said lightly as he played with his phone.

Letting out a sigh of relief inside, Nisei turned back to his computer. It surprised him that he could hide anything from Seimei, but maybe he'd misjudged how natural and part of himself pretend and lies were. "I have a few more things to finish still. If I don't do this boring stuff, who's going to pay for dinner?" he shot back playfully.

"Hurry up then."

Nisei opened the command line in a tiny corner window of his screen and checked on his query. It was done. There were 30 entries of the name Yui in the data, all grouped under a single schema named 'R&D'. Looking into the largest table, he ran a more directed query. This one completed immediately. From the fields listed, it all seemed to be medical records. As he scrolled through the data, one row at a time in the tiny, hidden computer window, he felt his heart begin to skip around erratically.

They were all flagged with the term 'Beloved'.


End file.
